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24 Hours Just Wasted…
Well that sucked. I have a Blu Ray TV show box set that I am ripping into individual episodes. I decided to encode the episodes with Ripbot instead of keeping as is. I have a Quad Core Q6600 desktop PC which is fast, but nowhere near as fast as a Core i7. On average if I do encode (which I rarely do anymore) it takes me about 6-8 hours to encode a a full movie Blu Ray (use CQ=20, L4.0). So for a tv show Blu Ray it takes about half of that (3-4 hours). The disc I was encoding had 6 episodes, so I set Ripbot in batch mode for all 6 episodes. The process started Sunday morning and just completed a few minutes ago, so probably around 20-22 hours. I just remoted in to check out the results to see that only one mkv was created, wtf??? It appears that even though I had selected individual playlists (per episode) which Ripbot processed it either just kept defaulting to the same playlist or kept using the same file name to output. So the end result, with 22 hours of encoding I am left with 1 mkv as with each encode Ripbot would just overwrite the previously encoded file. Oh well, back to the drawing board, time to pull out my handy MakeMKV
MakeMKV 1.4.12 Released – UPDATE
Yesterday I posted about the next release of MakeMKV which supported forced subtitles. I tested out briefly this morning before I left for work, and when I first loaded MakeMKV a popup appeared telling me that I had a 30 day evaluation of MakeMKV. After the 30 days was up an activiation key would need to be purchased. Although there is no official confirmation on the MakeMKV site, from digging around on the forum it appears that the one time fee will be USD 50.00.
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/02/03/makemkv-1-4-12-released-pay-model-on-the-way/
MakeMKV 1.4.12 Released
MakeMKV has just released version 1.4.12. The big update here is support for forced subtitles. When I get home I will test out on a few of my Blu Rays that have forced subtitles to see how well it works. Full list of changes below
MakeMKV v1.4.12
- Added support for AVCHD sources with recognition of camera metadata
- Corrected error when subtitles were missing with some blu-ray discs
- Added abilty to save only forced subtitles for blu-ray discs
- Miscellaneous stability and UI improvements
MakeMKV 1.4.11 Released
MakeMKV 1.4.10 Released – HD Audio Support Finally Added
Version 1.4.10 of MakeMKV has just been released. One of the biggest gripes with MakeMKV (and the reason why I stopped using for my Blu Ray collection) is that it did not support HD Audio (TrueHD/DTS-MA), it would only extract the core audio. Well, finally with this release MakeMKV fully supports HD Audio. I had a chance to test out on a few different movies that contained DTS(MA) or TrueHD and in each case MakeMKV created a perfect 1:1 copy of the movie. The only feature missing for me is the ability to create a secondary AC3 track. This can be done with TrueHD since AC3 is the core, but with DTS(MA) MakeMKV will only extract the DTS core. Right now I need a secondary AC3 track because one of the media players in my house does not support HD audio nor will it downmix. Maybe the answer is just to ditch that player already since it seems like all new players will have some sort of support for HD audio and stop worrying about AC3??? The other option would be to use MakeMKV, and then use a program like Popcorn MKV Audio Converter to create the AC3 track. And of course another option would be to use a combination of Clown_BD and MKVMerge (which I do currently). One other important note is that MakeMKV does not require a 3rd party software like AnyDVD. The only question though since MakeMKV only gets updated periodically is how will it handles decryption for newer movies. Choices, choices, choices…
Changelog:
- MakeMKV v1.4.10
- New functionality: instant video streaming
- Added support for all blu-ray HD audio tracks:
- Dolby TrueHD
- Dolby Digital plus (E-AC3)
- DTS–HD
- DTS–HD Losless (Master audio)
- DTS–HD Low bitrate
- Corrected drive access problems on Windows (AHCI)
- Corrected “MKV_ASSERT” error on titles with many subtitle tracks
- Miscellaneous stability improvements
If you want to see my guide and further writeup, you can get it here.
Software Updates
OK, between trying to review the PCH C-200 and trying to do a server restore on my DIY WHS (more to come on that later) I have been swamped and writing has been slow. I hope after this weekend things shoudl go back to normal…
For now, looks like some of my favorite programs have all released an update today:
Clown_BD – Version 0.71 just released
Changelog:
- Fixed GUI force subtitles. Thanks to GODU for posting logs.I didn’t notice this myself, as generally I use BATCH mode.
AnyDVD & AnyDVD HD – Version 6.5.8.7 just released
Changelog:
- New: Dialogs are now visible even if Vista / Windows 7 media center is running
- New: Language files are now validated when loaded. Errors are reported in the logfile. Incorrectly formatted language files could cause AnyDVD to crash.
- New (Blu-ray): Added support for new BD+ protections
- New (Blu-ray): Dramatic speedup decrypting some BD+ protections
- New (Blu-ray): Made region dialog more remote control friendly
- New (DVD): Added support for new copy protection, e.g. “Insanity Workout” and “One on One with Tony Horton” (US)
- New (DVD): Improved RCE detection & removal
- Fix (Blu-ray): Region free BD discs could be reported as region “C”
- Fix (DVD): All ifo patches are now done after AI scanner, because otherwise AI scanner couldn’t examine the disc “as is” and state files could be wrong if user changes settings between scans
- Fix (DVD): RCE removal was broken with discs having an RCE region code >= 3
- Some minor fixes and improvements
- Updated languages
MakeMKV – Version 1.4.7 beta released
Changelog:
- Small stability and UI improvements
- Fixed error leading to SIGSEGV on some Linux distributions
DVDFab & DVDFab HD – Version 6.1.0.0 Beta released
Changelog:
- Fix: A “Visual C++ Runtime Library” error for floating point support.>
- “DVD to DVD” option:
- Fix: Playable content may be removed in very special case when PathPlayer is enabled. Hopefully it’s been fixed permanently now.>
- “Blu-ray to Blu-ray” option:
- New: Added world’s first all-in-one Blu-ray compression feature.
- New: Added “compress BD-50 to single BD-25, BD-9 or BD-5” feature. For now only “Main Movie” mode is supported, “Full Disc” mode will be supported later.
- New: Added “Remove HD Audio” to convert Dolby TrueHD to Dolby AC3 and DTS-HD Master Audio to DTS, to save space for video when compression is needed.
- New: Improved speed for copying “BD-50” with no compression in “Main Movie” mode.
- New: CUDA and DXVA GPU acceleration are supported to speed up compression.
- Fix: Failed to enable DXVA at second time.>
- “File to Mobile” option:
- Fix: Failed to enable DXVA at second time.
Ripping Episodes From A TV Series DVD
I was having a discussion with my Canadian counterpart All4fun about the best way to rip individual TV episodes from a DVD. Now you may be asking, why not just rip the entire disk and keep as is. Well, for me there are two reasons. 1) Episodes for a TV Show may span over more then one disk. Having to navigate through several disks to find an episode can be a PITA. 2) Many of the Media Center Softwares have a nice UI designed specifically for individual tv episodes (I will be testing out a new add in called TV Explorer for SageTV shortly and will post my results/screenshots afterwards).
I have found that there are many different ways you can go about this. Here are a few ways I have tried:
Ripbot264:
- Tools – Ripbot264, AVISynth, ffdshow, Haali Media Splitter, Microsoft .Net Framework 3.5
- Encoding – Yes
- Additional Resources – MediaSmartServer Wiki I wrote
- Media Type: DVD, HD DVD, and Blu Ray
- Output File: .mp4, .mkv, AVCHD
- Decrypter Needed: Yes (such as AnyDVD)
- Batch Mode: Yes
- Comments: Although Ripbot264 can be used with Standard DVDs I had mixed results generating the correct playlists to choose from, so you are left guessing which vob to use. For HD DVDs / Blu Rays playlists will be generated from which you can choose an episode from.
Screenshot of Ripbot264 with Playlist Selection (I used Planet Earth HD DVD as an example).
DVDFab/DVD Shrink
- Tools – DVDFab or DVDShrink, VOBMerge (optional), VOB2MPG (optional)
- Encoding – No
- Additional Resources – MediaSmartServer Wiki I wrote
- Media Type: DVD, HD DVD (DVDFab only), and Blu Ray (DVDFab only)
- Output File: vob, mpeg (optional)
- Decrypter Needed: No
- Batch Mode: No
- Comments: Both DVDFab and DVDShrink have options that will allow you to rip episodes (i.e. Titles) into vobs (Video_TS). Where needed though the vobs will be broken up into pieces of approx 1GB (I think there is an option in DVDShrink to ignore this and just make one big .vob). To make one big .vob instead of multiple vobs you can use VOBMerge. Some players however will not recognize this individual vob file (such as MediaBrowser), so you can use VOB2MPG to convert the vob to an MPEG.
Screenshot of DVDFab
Screenshot of DVDShrink
Screenshot of VOBMerge
Screenshot of VOB2MPG
MakeMKV:
- Tools – MakeMKV
- Encoding – No
- Additional Resources – Blog Post
- Media Type: DVD, HD DVD, and Blu Ray
- Output File: .mkv
- Decrypter Needed: No (for DVDs/Blu Ray that MakeMKV cannot decrypt then Yes)
- Batch Mode: No
- Comments: This is a great little program that I use often to create MKVs from my Blu Ray / HD DVDs. Only negative right now is that it does not support DTS-MA or TrueHD audio (it only extracts the core audio, usually DTS or AC3)
Screenshot of MakeMKV
- Tools – Clown_BD, tsMuxeR, eac3to, BDSup2Sub, ImgBurn, Java Runtime
- Encoding – No
- Additional Resources – Blog Post, MediaSmartServer Wiki I wrote
- Media Type: HD DVD, Blu Ray
- Output File: .ts, .m2ts, Blu Ray, Blu Ray + Iso
- Decrypter Needed: Yes (such as AnyDVD)
- Batch Mode: Yes
- Comments: Does not support Standard DVDs. This is a great program (I probably use this the most) which allows you to retain the HD audion (DTS-MA, TrueHD, etc…). You can also opt to convert the audio to AC3/DTS or add as a secondary track.
- Tools – Handbrake
- Encoding – Yes
- Additional Resources – N/A
- Media Type: DVD
- Output File: .mp4, .mkv, .avi, .ogm
- Decrypter Needed: Yes (such as AnyDVD)
- Batch Mode: Yes
- Comments: I started using this program a few weeks ago to encode some of my animated tv shows. I was also able to encode my Chappelle Show DVD set successfully with Handbrake, of which I got horrible results when using Ripbot264
- Always check the files you output once completed. Don’t assume the encode/rip went ok without confirming first, even if the same process/settings have worked in the past.
- Another program I didn’t highlight that I have tried in the past is MediaShrink (see Blog Post here). It is a command line tool. I ran into too many instances where it would pull out the incorrect episodes to keep using.
- Any process that involves encoding is going to take a lot longer and require more CPU (i.e. using handbrake, ripbot264) then just doing a rip/remux (MakeMKV, Clown_BD)
- I find the best naming convention is to create a main folder with the show name, sub folders for each season, and then S##E## within each Season folder (i.e. Supernatutal -> Season 1 -> S01E01). You can then use a program called TV Rename to get the full names of each episode (see blog post here)
- One item that is a PITA is figuring out exactly what episode you are ripping. What I usually do is play the dvd that I am ripping in a program like PowerDVD, go to the episode selection menu and select each episode. When the episode plays in the bottom right corner of PowerDVD it will tell me the title # of the episode, which I can then use as a cross reference when ripping/encoding as well as cross reference against TVDB.
MakeMKV – Another Blu Ray to MKV Solution
I currently use Ripbot264 to convert my Blu Ray movies into 8GB h.264 mkvs. IMO the mkvs look great when playing back on my tv, but when you take a 30GB movies and shrink it down to 8GB you are bound to lose something. So with HDDs growing larger and getting cheaper I am debating whether I start keeping my Blu Rays lossless or continue encoding down to 8GB mkvs. Keeping the mkv lossless should take about an hour (including the time it takes to rip the Blu Ray if that is done first) which would be a big improvement over the 15+ hours it takes me to encode down to an 8GB mkv. However I will now be taking up anywhere from 2-4 times the space on a HDD.
One solution I came across was a small application called MakeMKV, which takes your unencrypted Blu Ray disc and throws it into an mkv container. You have the option to choose what audio/video stream(s) you want to keep, which allows you to strip out any unnecessary data, leading to a smaller file size. You can find a guide with more information on MakeMKV here.
TIP – you can accomplish this with Ripbot264 as well. Before any encoding is done Ripbot264 will demux the Blu Ray and store the results in a temp file. You can locate the individual video and audio stream, and using MKVMerge combine into one mkv.
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